Hello Darling Ones,

Two letters in two days? Count your lucky stars!

I wanted to write today because it’s Eye Day and I want to bellyache about it.

There are a lot of really great things about Eye Day. Namely, not losing my entire sight to macular edema and diabetic retinopathy. That’s not even exaggeration for humor’s sake. That’s the actual, factual truth. Without this treatment I will go blind.

Another good thing about Eye Day? The security guy who works at the building the Retina Consultants of Minnesota is in. Sister #4 & I love this guy. A few months ago he met us at the door with a wheelchair.

Usually, Sister #4 drives because my mom hates 494, and drops her off at the entrance. Mom then hauls ass upstairs to get a wheelchair for me, and brings it down. While I could lurch up there with my walker, coming down after the shots is scary because they wipe out my vision.

So back in like October when he met us at the door with the chair, saying, “I saw your name on the schedule and thought this would help.”

Sister #4 & I were instantly smitten. We are convinced he has a crush on my mom. Sometimes he even rides up in the elevator with us and they discuss the weather.

“Is he gonna be our new dad?” I tease my mom, who is done with men after my dad (he died in 2021).
“I’m calling him Dad,” my sister said. “I hope he doesn’t mind.”

Even though what happens at the Retina Consultants’ office sucks, they are top-notch pros. A well-oiled, perfectly choreographed ballet. Every time is the same. I wait in the main waiting room until I’m called back for eyes tests. Then Waiting Room B until I’m called for scans, and then back to it until Dr. D is ready to see me.

Seeing this in action is much cooler and impressive than I’m making it out to be. Waiting Room B is primo, chef’s kiss eavesdropping territory. Today featured a bitter women who believed “the left infiltrated healthcare and is poisoning all the babies.” She was bitter because she was dumped for not being vaxxed. She’d never even been tested for COVID she bragged to the woman next to her. She claimed the man was no big loss. “He’s forty-five and divorced,” she said. “He never even had kids. Just dogs.”

I should have asked her for his phone number. He sounds good to me.

Despite all this, Eye Day sucks because once I get the treatment my vision is super garbage for the rest of the day. I spend the day with achey eyes that feel super full, which they are because of the medicine injected into them. But the worst part is it washes out everything. I spend the day feeling like I’m looking through a thick grey fog that doesn’t clear until I get up the next day.

Plus, there’s tiny floaters which I can see pretty clearly. So not only does everything look fuzzy, I keep jerking my head convinced there’s a fly in my house.

It also sucks, because I hate using the wheelchair. It makes me feel lazy and like I’m in the way. It’s such a shitty ablelist thing. I have never seen another person in a wheelchair and thought such things, but when it’s me it’s somehow different?

[[[[[[gt;yh <---- That's what Mortimer had to say. Anyway, Dr. D said it was normal for me to have a tough time seeing despite the new glasses. When I said the distortion was more noticeable now that things are clearer he shook his head in agreement. "That's why we keep doing this," he said. So that's eye day. Zero fun. 100% worth it. Love, Jodi

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Hey Darling Ones,

Over the weekend I watched not one but two docuseries on the Twin Flames cult. One on Netflix and the other on Amazon Prime. Both fascinating.

I love documentaries about cults and con artists, which if you think about it are kind of the same thing.

If you don’t know about the Twin Flames Universe it’s a pyramid scheme/religion run by two jokers who claim to know who your twin flame is, which is like a soulmate on steroids and for some number of dollars they guarantee they will hook you up with your twin flame. Then you will live happily ever after boning and being rich and happy.

Of course, it’s complete bullshit and sadly, vulnerable people fall for it.

Even though I don’t believe there’s one soulmate for each person, I did spend a lot of time thinking about my twin flames. Here’s a short list.

1. Matt Dillon. Probably.
2. Fergus. When she curls up on my chest and her head nestled underneath my chin? I turn into a pile of goo.
3. Leslie Jones I spent parts of the weekend when I wasn’t watching Twin Flames listening to her memoir, and now my inner voice is Leslie Jones’s voice. I call everybody a motherfucker. For example, while I watched the Twin flame shows I kept saying to Fergus, “Who in hell would follow the word of that Pete Campbell looking motherfucker?”
4. My eye doctor. He is a petite Filipino man who I’ve been going to for years. I saw him last week, and he was so pumped about how much better my vision (20/20 s 20/40) is going to be with my new glasses (which should be here in 7 to 10 business days). Plus, he was all, “you should put new lenses in those frames, because they really suit your face.”
5. Pickled red onions. I just made my fourth pint of pickled red onions in the last three months. For Christmas I got a mandoline and some new jars that are a little easier for my hands to handle, so I’m gonna pickle everything this winter.
6. Harry Connick, Jr. circa 1990-1993. I’m revisiting my Harry Connick phase. I cannot get enough of his version of Lazybones. I listen to it every night before I go to sleep because I am ridiculous.

Will all you Darling One ones cross your fingers that this is the last blurry-ass update?Hopefully the next update I’ll be able to see clearly and this will help my writing again and I can get work because your girl is broke.

Love, Jodi.

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Hi Darling Ones,

I am very cranky today. This says a lot, because my normal demeanor includes a lot of low-level crankiness. Today, it’s extra super very.

Can I list off all my reasons for crank? Of course I can. This is my website. I can do what I want.

I’m not gonna though. All the things making me grouchy are the average things that make everyone grouchy. Broke. Busy. Got a summons for jury duty when I JUST had a stroke. My Aunt Tete died.You know the drill.

Besides, I don’t want to tell you all about my derelict cervix even though my mom already told everyone down at The Windmill (BFK’s restaurant).

I continue to be a tsunami of bummer.

However, yesterday I had my second awful eye treatment and it was moderately less awful. I did not faint and the doctor was happy that my eyes are showing improvement. My vision is still garbage, but not as garbagey as before.

Time & patience, right?

–insert 572 barf emojis–

And the best thing, besides the not fainting, is my floaters are already gone.

Do you know about floaters? Have you experienced them before?

They are a trip. Basically they are air bubbles in your eye and you can see them. I did my best to recreate what my floaters look like (see image at the top of this post). They are black circles that are transparent in the middle. When you move your eyes around, the floaters move around. Sometimes they reconfigure themselves giving your vision a kaleidoscope affect.

It’s a trip, man. At least I think it is. I never did LSD because I believed Nancy Reagan and didn’t want a scrambled egg brain. Little did I know there’s more than one way to get brain damage.

Anyway, my floaters are gone and I am cranky.

Love & lollipops,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

For the official record, the brain weasels were right.

I have both macular edema and diabetic retinopathy.

THIS NEXT PART IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH PLEASE SKIP
Now I have to go to the eye specialist every four weeks and get medicine injected into my right eye. I am not exaggerating at all. It’s rough. I had it done last week and it took me two days to recover.

THIS PART IS A LITTLE SAFER
I did not take well to the treatment for my eye problems and fainted for the first time in my life. One second I was sitting in the wheelchair feeling woozy and the next I seemed upside down with my feet in the air, chaos filling the room.

When I passed out they tipped me back in the chair and got my feet above my heart.

As I came to they sat me back up and pressed a small can of orange juice into my hands. My mom was crying, telling the medical staff, “I just lost my husband in September. I thought I was losing my daughter too.”

Damn.

That’s the latest in my avalanche of woe. It sucks, but hopefully the treatments will help and I’ll be able to see clearly again.

Not gonna lie though, I have a mammogram, a pap smear, and a colonoscopy in the coming weeks. I’m worried that the hits will continue. This is what happens when you ignore your body for 50 years.

Thankfully, the Lexapro helps keep brain weasels at bay.

Despite everything, the awfulness remains manageable. I’m graduating from in-home physical & occupational therapy this week, which means I start going to the clinic soon. My goal is to have 0 appointments next week as a birthday gift to myself.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot. My Aunt Anna sent me some lovely white & purple flowers to cheer me up after the fainting incident. It worked.

Awfully yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Before I get on with the real confession, I have an initial confession that has nothing to do with the real one.

I didn’t notice until right now that the eyes featured on the cover of The Great Gatsby are not the eyes of famed oculist Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. It’s pretty obvious. I have no idea why I always thought they were ol’ T.J.’s eyes.

For a book I never read during my formal education and only read on my own at some point, The Great Gatsby sure takes up a lot of space in my greymatter.

I keep thinking of the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg because I’m having problems with my own eyes.

Though it seems sudden, my sight has gotten progressively worse over the past month or so in a way that feels alarming to me. I can’t read the laptop screen unless I bump up fonts to baby boomer proportions. Taking off my glasses and pressing my nose to the screen also works. Watching TV is a nightmare.

I literally have trouble focusing.

I have bad eyes. I have since I was a teenager. Corrective lenses have been a fact of my life for 37 years and yet this new, weird blurry vision has freaked me the fuck out.

I’ve been in the deepest depths of a doom spiral. This is the kind of spiral where I keep asking Dr. Google about what could be going wrong and the frightening results paralyze me. The fear keeps me from telling anyone. Instead I grow ever more depressed and anxious while putting on my smiling face. I get so scared about what could be wrong it keeps me from seeking actual help. My brain weasels firmly believe not knowing is better than knowing. They are huge proponents of ignorance is bliss, even though I can’t fucking see and there is no bliss in blurriness. At least not the I can see.

I know it’s irrational and dumb, and yet I still do it. Before you get your lecture ready, I have an eye doctor appointment on Monday.

And, if you don’t know me by now, I am obviously feeling a little better about this because I’m writing about it.

Sister #4 was here last night because she flew out of MSP this morning for a work-reward trip to the Bahamas with Sister #2 as her +1.

After some small talk when she arrived I barfed all my anxiety on her.

“I think I have macular degeneration/brain tumor/diabetic retinopathy/macular edema,” I told her.

“Oh,” she said. “Why is that.”

I explained all my reasons and she listened patiently, nodding her head, and agreeing how all that would be alarming. She also told me how she does the doom spiral too and concludes that she’s having a heart attack or appendicitis at least once a month.

Apparently, this runs in the family.

And then she said, “And it could also be you’re fifty and haven’t been to the eye doctor in two years.”

“Maybe,” I said. “This just feels different.”

She gently reminded me that I have never been fifty before and that my eyesight might be different now. Then I told her she should be nicer to me because I have a brain tumor.

That’s my confession, Darling Ones. I’m still kinda freaked out, and convinced there are dire diagnoses in my future, but a little less so now.

Hope the best for me if you can,
Jodi

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